@garrettmurray@mastodon.social
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garrettmurray

@garrettmurray@mastodon.social

✦ Founder & Managing Director of Karbon ✦ iOS, video games, keyboards, tech, he/him ✦ Writing at https://karbonbased.io

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Luke, to random
@Luke@typo.social avatar

@garrettmurray btb, in your TP-7 photo, is that a wood and metal keyboard frame or just metal? That thing looks primo.

garrettmurray,
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@Luke Metal, the coppery part is a little metal logo badge, but you're right that in the photo it almost looks like wood. It's the Lofree Flow84 in black: https://www.lofree.co/products/lofree-flow-the-smoothest-mechanical-keyboard?variant=44741423169755

garrettmurray,
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

@AnthonyBaker @Luke I have both—in the photo Luke is referencing you can see my Frankenstein combo of them (https://mastodon.social/@garrettmurray/112503146108134952). I have the black Lofree Flow but swapped the switches for their ghost pom switches on the alphanumerics and then moved over the NuPhy white caps. 😅

garrettmurray,
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@AnthonyBaker @Luke I like the design of the NuPhy more, but I think the Lofree is better to type on because it has a gasket mount and the pom switches are nicer. But the NuPhy is also really good for the price and being low profile, plus it supports Via whereas Lofree has to be Karabiner Elements-overridden annoyingly. They're both surprisingly excellent boards.

garrettmurray, to random
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I know I dunk on a lot of bad technology I purchase—things which no one should buy—but the Teenage Engineering TP-7 (which I absolutely don't need) is one of the most beautiful and well-made little pieces of technology I've ever purchased. I love it.

garrettmurray,
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

I originally recorded this post as a memo, then used the TE app to auto-transcribe it from the audio. Total tech overkill. But so fun!

A video showing the TP-7 playing back the memo that I transcribed for this post.

garrettmurray, to random
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

Two years ago, I invested in the IKEA Fyrtur smart blinds and they’re terrific. Easy to install, minimal and modern, and they work with HomeKit (and Google/Alexa). Compared to other smart blinds, they were fairly inexpensive to get into all of the bedrooms and other key areas of our home. They’re also battery-powered, which was a potential concern, but I’ve only had to charge them 3 times in the past 2 years. [1/7]

garrettmurray,
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Back when I bought them required IKEA hub was the Trådfri, which was flaky as hell. Took forever to connect to devices, required frequent restarts, and would sometimes just refuse to update devices in HomeKit. But, after a few months, it seemed mostly stable, especially since we could still control the blinds with the remotes in each room anyway, and HomeKit wasn’t required (only a nice to have for automation). [2/7]

garrettmurray,
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But then IKEA announced Dirigera, their new hub, and Trådfri and its controlling app were marked EOL. Fun part? You cannot easily upgrade and move devices from one hub to the other—you have to start over. Dirigera is faster to set up, and far more reliable, but it’s still a big undertaking with 22 blinds in our house, plus remotes and signal repeaters. I bought the Dirigera but then put off actually upgrading to it for months. [3/7]

garrettmurray,
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

Finally, two weekends ago, I spent the entire day moving devices over. I cleaned up their names, HomeKit settings, etc. And I will say, the Dirigera is much faster and more reliable. Except, frustratingly, it suffers from the same problem Trådfri had, wherein any time the internet goes down or gets restarted in our house, the hub will come back online but it will show all devices as disconnected in HomeKit. [4/7]

garrettmurray,
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

The ONLY way to resolve this is to reboot the IKEA hub itself. I have tried other things (reconnect ethernet, open the IKEA Smart Home app and refresh HomeKit connection, etc)—nothing but a literal reboot of the hardware will solve it. What’s the big deal, you might ask? Well, I don’t keep this hub just out in the middle of a room, it’s under a desk in a wire rack, connected to a switch via ethernet. So toggling the power on the hub is not exactly convenient. [5/7]

garrettmurray,
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I ended up solving this with ANOTHER HomeKit-powered device. Recently, I did some research and ended up buying (for an unrelated reason) the TP-Link Tapo Matter smart plugs, and they work really well. No futzing with hubs, and Matter support so they have been extremely reliable. I put the IKEA Dirigera on a Tapo smart plug, and now if the internet gets reset or for some other reason the hub isn’t working in HomeKit, I just turn off the plug through the Home app, then turn it back on. [6/7]

garrettmurray,
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

By coincidence, I had thought of this solution just the day before most of Portland lost power when a beaver chewed through a tree that fell on some critical power lines (peak PNW!), so when the power came back on and the hub grabbed internet before our router was back online, I just used the plug to power-cycle the hub and HomeKit was back in business.

Not bad for the price of the Dirigera hub, 22 Fyrtur blinds, the TP-Link switch, a hundred hours of my time, and my sanity. [7/7!]

garrettmurray,
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

@Luke Oh, we have cameras everywhere in the house/outside, but I currently don’t have automation attached to them, they’re just for overseeing the house, property, kids, pets. I’ve been all-in on HomeKit and automation and such for years. I should post an example of how insane my HomeKit screen looks at this point with all the devices.

garrettmurray, to random
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What an absolutely amazing game. I can't recommend it enough.

garrettmurray, to random
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I buy stupid things I shouldn’t, part 500. Clicks keyboard case for iPhone. AMA.

garrettmurray,
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

@Luke I would describe it as squish-clicky. It clicks, but there’s squishiness in the small travel too, so it has that Treo-esque tactile but gross feeling.

garrettmurray, to random
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Rolled credits on @animal_well, but still more to do. What an incredible game, and absolutely perfect for Steam Deck.

garrettmurray,
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@Luke Steam Deck is great, especially for a certain type of game. For the past two months it has basically been my Balatro machine.

garrettmurray, to random
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It's really neat that the environments in Vision Pro will change based on your local weather (e.g. if it starts raining where I live, the Mt. Hood environment will have rain), but I wish I could explicitly change the weather to set the mood. Sometimes I might want it to rain just for the ambience, and also sometimes I might want to escape the real-life rain with a sunny version of Mt. Hood instead.

garrettmurray, to random
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

@imyke Curious, how did you and Jason end up getting your Personas captured for Upgrade ep 498? I've thought about FaceTiming an alt account, QT capturing from a phone, etc, but wondering how you did it if there's a better way.

garrettmurray, to random
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

One of the best subtle things visionOS does is cast realistic soft shadows from windows and panels on the pass-through real-world floor. It’s so simple, but it really sells the spatial computing nature of this device and makes these windows feel like actual physical objects anchored in reality. It’s so unbelievably good, and the first time I noticed it my jaw dropped.

garrettmurray,
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@sdw Yep, always top left here too.

twostraws, to random
@twostraws@mastodon.social avatar

I built a visionOS app, and it's been approved in time for launch on Friday. It's called Spatial Symphony, and it's a synthesizer controlled entirely through hand gestures 🤌 I wrote about building the prototype, attending Apple's labs, and more here: https://www.hackingwithswift.com/articles/265/shipping-a-visionos-app-for-launch

garrettmurray,
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@twostraws So awesome, Paul, congrats! Looking forward to trying it out.

garrettmurray, to random
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Blessing and curse of making your own keyboards is sometimes you just wanna game on a Saturday, but first you need to replace your WASD switches because after 2 years of use they’re not always actuating. So you throw a deskmat upside down on the rug, pop open the keyboard, de-solder ‘em, move the stems (silenced) into new housings (same switch type but unsilenced), re-solder and then game. (Note: Soldering iron was not yet on in this photo!)

garrettmurray, to random
@garrettmurray@mastodon.social avatar

I’m sad to say that while I wish the best for all the terrific people at Cotton Bureau, I’m done ordering shirts from them. Over the past few years the quality of their prints went from bad to completely unacceptable, and despite many assurances it would improve, it’s at the lowest point now. All the while, prices of shirts have increased dramatically. I keep trying them again every 6 months, and it’s just shocking how poor the quality. Such a shame.

garrettmurray,
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@beep It really is the end of an era for me 😭

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